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lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-09 12:15 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-09 12:15 pm
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Chapter Twenty-Six of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror- Corpse of a Marriage
Remember, DH SPOILERS in this story!
Thank you again for all the reviews! I had a few questions about why Draco would claim he didn’t love Harry or wasn’t sure, which are (hopefully) addressed in this chapter.
As for the angst, it still marches on. Starting with the chapter title, as you can probably see. But it starts getting a bit better towards the end.
Chapter Twenty-Six—Corpse of a Marriage
Harry let the door fall gently shut behind him. He would have to have his conversation with Ginny now—it was already the middle of the morning—although weariness pulled at him like the wings of a lethifold. He could hear her moving quietly about the kitchen. Apparently James and Al were still asleep, or asleep again after breakfast, or perhaps over at Molly’s.
Over at Molly’s, Harry decided, when he stepped into the kitchen and saw it clean of any traces of milk, cereal, orange juice, or pumpkin juice. Not even a Scourgify could make it look this neat when the children had been eating.
Ginny, balancing Lily against her arm as she fed her, started when she saw him. Then her mouth drew tight, and she nodded once. “I’ll put her down in a minute,” she whispered. “She’s almost asleep. Then we can talk.”
Harry nodded absently and sat down at the table, trying to decide if he was hungry. He didn’t think so. The collision with the dragon’s tail seemed to have knocked the hunger out of his stomach along with his ribs out of their proper alignment.
He wondered what Draco would say about that—probably gripe, it was what he did—and then banished the fond smile he could feel forming on his face. Ginny. This was about Ginny now. He would tell her the pure and absolute truth, and let her make the decision about what they should do.
He was startled to feel an odd, cool sensation a moment later, as though his entire left side had been plunged into running water. He glanced down, and felt the scar shiver at the same time as it gave him the cool sensation again. It wasn’t entirely pleasurable, but it wasn’t painful, and it had the effect of scattering his thoughts.
I suppose this is one way to ensure that I focus on my own happiness, too, Harry thought, but he had ignored stranger things. He faced the doorway, even as the tingling from the scar grew more insistent, and waited until Ginny stepped back through, brushing her hands together briskly to remove small bits of baby-debris.
“She’s asleep,” she said, sitting down across from Harry. “And the boys are at the Burrow. What happened?”
“The warning Hermione received was correct,” Harry said simply. “The Masked Lady attacked Hogwarts, with dragons.”
Ginny’s hand twitched, lifted halfway to her face, and then dropped again, as if the shock were too much for such a mundane expression as covering her mouth or eyes. “Did any of the children get hurt?”
Harry shook his head. “The Masked Lady didn’t seem to have expected such opposition, and she fled. But Hermione’s arm was in a sling, and Ron had to have several healing potions.” He hesitated, then added, “And I got torn up by a Hungarian Horntail, and Draco saved my life.”
Ginny’s hands twined tightly together now, apparently for comfort. “I see,” she said. “And how many life-debts is it that you owe each other now?”
“Six altogether,” said Harry. “Three on his part, three on mine. He’s asked for, and received, payments for all of his. There’s still one of mine outstanding.” He met Ginny’s gaze and forged into the most difficult part. “And I discovered that I’m in love with him.”
Ginny’s eyes shut, very gently.
“You wanted to be,” she said.
“I didn’t,” Harry said. Shouting would do no good, he thought. Rational, calm, as reasonable as possible. That was the way to go. But he wouldn’t let her think things that weren’t true. “It makes everything harder. And of course the marriage vows bind me to your side. You’re the only spouse I’ll ever have, Gin. I don’t intend to betray you.”
“No, it just happens anyway,” Ginny muttered, and looked at him again. There was a shine to her eyes that might have been tears. If they were, she was keeping them tightly veiled. “I need—something more than this, Harry,” she said, with a vague gesture of her hand. “Something more than this empty exercise where you continue to make excuses for things you claim you can’t help, and then you go off and do them again.”
Harry let out his breath. This was actually a better reaction than he had anticipated. “You have suggestions?”
“No,” said Ginny, and her mouth had turned into a flat line. “The therapy and the Dreamless Sleep potion were it. What do you propose to do?”
The cold tingling of the scar on his ribs was really quite annoying, Harry thought as he shifted in his seat, only as ignorable as the taste of mint in his mouth. “Not sleep with Draco, obviously,” he said. “Spend more time around you and the children.” The scar tingled again, but Harry refused to say aloud that he was seeking his own happiness. Ginny was likely to snap that he did nothing but, and Harry couldn’t stand to hear that right now. “Help Hermione with the war; that might give me something else to think about besides Draco.” Not likely, with him always haunting your mind. “Continue with the therapy and the use of Dreamless Sleep potion, since you asked. Help you through your grief over George.”
Ginny glanced down, picking at the surface of the table. “I notice that nowhere in your list is ‘sleep with your wife,’” she said.
Harry froze and then swallowed. The tingling of the scar had multiplied, so that now it seemed to have an echo on the right side of his body. But he wasn’t paying attention to it; he wouldn’t begin scratching madly in the middle of a serious discussion with Ginny, which had suddenly turned towards the sour again. “Would you really want me to, in this condition?” he asked.
“What condition?”
“This condition of lusting over and falling in love with someone else.” Harry held her eyes, though it was difficult, especially with the scar buzzing behind his teeth now.
“You think you’re in love,” Ginny said.
“I know I am.”
And Ginny spun to her feet, seized an empty bottle—of Firewhiskey, maybe?—that had stood on the counter, and hurled it against the wall. “I hate this!” she screamed, loudly enough that Harry tensed, expecting a complementary scream from Lily any moment. But no wail followed, only the sound of Ginny’s voice, half-words and half-sobs. “It couldn’t just—our life couldn’t just continue, could it? Or even just continue with a war in it and my brother dying! There always has to be some fucking complication! I hate this—I hate Draco Malfoy—I hate—“ And then she was crying flat out, gripping the table as if it alone could prevent her from sliding to the floor.
Harry stood up and came awkwardly around the table to cradle her in his arms. He wondered if he should, if he had the right to, but if he hadn’t, then he would have endured a tirade about that later.
Ginny clung to him, and shook and shook and shook, her voice the raw, helpless sound of Al’s when he’d been teased and harassed by James all day. Harry stroked her hair and worked to hold her up through sheer strength, since all her muscles seemed to have gone limp. Finally, he picked her up and carried her into the library, where they could sit down on a sofa together.
Through it all, his own helplessness twisted in him like a blade, and the scar buzzed and buzzed and buzzed until the cool tingle of it occupied half his thoughts. Harry almost wished it hurt instead. He was better at ignoring pain than simple peculiarity.
“You’re going,” Ginny whispered, when Harry had spent ten minutes trying to find the right combination of words that would let her know he loved her and stop the crying. Her voice was small and simple and exhausted now. “I’m trying to keep hold of you, to keep our love alive, but you’re going.”
Harry, startled by both her speaking and another surge of shivering from the scar, had a sudden clear thought: Is this really what love feels like? I don’t think it is.
He buried the thought, shoved it behind several impenetrable doors and piled rocks in front of it. No. He was not leaving Ginny behind. He was not doubting her love for him. There were certain things he could not do, not even for Draco.
“I’m not,” he whispered, cradling the back of her head and kissing her brow. The scar buzz sent his lips cutting into his teeth. “I’m sorry. What can I change, Ginny? Tell me what to do.”
“I’m so tired,” Ginny said, voice almost reduced to a slurred murmur against his neck. “I’ve made so many suggestions, and they haven’t worked. You come up with something now.” Her hands curled around his neck, and she clung there, waiting to be comforted.
Like a spoiled child—
Harry buried that thought, too. Was it the scar introducing these strange concepts into his head? He felt growing anger against Draco for demanding this particular life-debt. He just didn’t have time right now to acknowledge it. He would have to, because he had no choice, but he really had no time for it.
“All right,” he said, and closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could, hoping for some sudden inspiration to hit him.
The scar kept cutting through any chains of logic he formed, rattling and shaking his head, and the words your own happiness began repeating in a dull mantra. Harry wondered irritably if one of his own suggestions to right matters should be “killing Draco.”
“I think,” he said at last, “that I may have fulfilled my obligations to the Malfoys as far as the first life-debt goes. I’ve learned the reason that Draco was framed for murder, and while I haven’t captured the people who actually did it, stopping the Masked Lady will stop them.”
Ginny tensed on his lap, but said only, “Malfoy might not agree.”
“Narcissa was the one who claimed the debt, so she’s the one who has the right to say when it’s fulfilled.” Harry shrugged, as much as he could when holding his wife so close. Your own happiness, your own happiness! He might say those words in a minute, and though Ginny probably wouldn’t take them the wrong way, Harry hated the amount of control this one debt appeared to be exercising over him already. “I have an excuse to stay away from them now. Oh, I can’t cut off contact with them altogether,” he added, as Ginny’s face suddenly shone. “Another life-debt payment was a friendship with Draco. But there’s no reason for me to spend every morning over there doing research, when we’ve learned—“
His tongue escaped him for a moment, and tangled behind his teeth. Harry coughed to cover it, and fought grimly against the sudden conviction of what he had to do.
The debt wants me to make a promise that will assure my happiness. Bastard! Harry wasn’t sure if he meant Draco with the word, or the particular debt the scar represented, or life in general.
“Yes?” Ginny prompted him.
“We’ve learned what we needed to learn about this thing creating the fading and the visions in mirrors and the dreams between us,” said Harry in determination, though his mouth tried to twist away from him and say, I want to just spend time with Al and Teddy, because that will make me happiest right now, and I want to spend a morning thinking about Draco and nothing else.
“Between you?” Ginny’s voice was shrill. “You—you told me that you were the only one who had the dreams!”
Harry grimaced. If he hadn’t been fighting a losing battle with the debt, he would have known better than to say that. “The dreams have changed,” he said. “Not all of them are about sex, but Draco’s having them too.”
“The exact same dreams?”
Harry nodded.
Ginny’s head fell limply against Harry’s chest, as if all the hope had been drained away. “Please take Dreamless Sleep as long as you can,” she mumbled. “Harry, please. I don’t ask for much, you know that.”
You do, Harry wanted to say, but that was the debt’s fault; he was more aware of the cool pulsing along his ribs now than he was of the warmth and weight of his wife in his arms. And any moment now, he would say something that would deeply sour relations between them. Already, the impulse to say No to her request was trying to take him over.
Goddamnit.
In silence, Harry made the promise to himself to spend time with Teddy today, doing nothing but play games or go to Diagon Alley or whatever else his godson wanted to do. He would do it regardless of what else happened, regardless of what Ginny or Draco or George’s ghost demanded from him.
The cool tingle retreated to what was almost a pleasant sensation. Harry blinked, and then shook his head, but when Ginny wanted to know if that meant he was refusing her, he murmured, “Of course not, love. I’ll take the Dreamless Sleep tonight and as many other nights as it’s safe. What else would you like?”
Ginny suddenly took a deep breath, and said, “You’ll do it.”
“Yes.” Perhaps Harry simply had a clearer perspective now that the scar was no longer trying to inundate his brain, but he thought it was odd she had given in with so little fuss. He frowned. “Love, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll—I just wanted—“ Ginny shivered a few times, and then absently caressed his arm. “I just wanted to know that you would,” she whispered.
Harry blinked, but he was all too glad to think they had avoided several deeper problems with such a simple solution—that Ginny had not started blaming him for falling in love with Draco, for example, or that he would have been required to have an argument about staying away from Malfoy Manor altogether. He proceeded to spend some time stroking her hair, before he stood and prepared to visit Andromeda and Teddy. He could check on their health and keep his promise to himself at the same time.
Ginny let him go with little more than a deep kiss and a sigh of relief. Her hand did tighten in his hair, but overall she seemed to trust to his willingness to keep his promises.
I do that, Harry thought as he Apparated. Even the ones that somebody had no right to ask of me in payment for a life-debt.
*
It was occurring to Draco that he might, after all, be in love.
He sat in the nursery, next to Scorpius’s bed—his son had fallen asleep after a round of play intense enough to leave Draco staggering—and held his arm over his eyes. Not that the ceiling was so ornamented as to provide a grand distraction, but he thought it better to give himself no escape from his thoughts.
He had assumed that of course he wasn’t in love with Harry, or else that he didn’t know, because he hadn’t felt the single grand, overwhelming realization that Harry had.
But since he’d never loved someone romantically, how would he know?
He had, of course, never loved Marian. Lust and a basic politeness, when they could still get along, did well enough. And his lovers were about physical expression of the needs Marian couldn’t meet, and sometimes about annoying her or chasing the forbidden. There had never been place or room in Draco’s life for overwhelming.
So perhaps he wouldn’t recognize it when it came to him? Or perhaps he felt it differently than Harry did, and judging his own emotions by the same standards naturally wouldn’t work?
Experimentally, he tried to picture Harry separating from his wife and cutting off contact with him—not taking another lover, so Draco had nothing to be physically jealous about, but also refusing to spend time with him, not being there to joke with, not being in arm’s reach when Draco wanted to share the wonder that was his son or his own survival, not encouraging Draco to reach for his potential…
A snarl escaped Draco’s teeth, and he opened his eyes in startlement as his hands clenched down on the arms of the chair and splinters drove into the palms. Carefully, he released the hold and then glanced over at Scorpius. He was asleep, his lips parted, a soft baby bubble of spit and air having escaped them to gleam on his cheek. Draco’s heart contracted painfully.
And it went on contracting when he thought of Harry parting from him. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He needed Harry in his life, whether they ever became more intimate than the kiss Harry had given him last night and the brush of skin to scar. This was a requirement, not a luxury. He would have given up the chance to see anyone in the world save his mother and his son in order to see Harry.
He remembered the life-debt promise that Harry would continue in friendship with Draco. He seized on it with a greed that startled him. There was at least that, no matter what else tried to part them.
But couldn’t we still be friends—
Not unless a friend was someone he trusted to lay his heart open and go through it with a dozen small knives. Not unless he would have handed his wand over to a friend without a second thought. Not unless he could watch a friend toss Scorpius in the air and not be alarmed.
His relationships with Blaise and Millicent had never been like that, or with Pansy, not back in the very headiest and closest days of Slytherin House. If his experience with Harry was simple friendship, then Draco had never known simple friendship before.
And the other close ties in his life—to Lucius and to Snape—shared nothing in common with his tie to Harry, either. And whatever he felt, it was the very opposite of his fear around Bellatrix and the Dark Lord.
Draco shivered. It was a strange and peculiar thing, to know the isolated Draco Malfoy might have fallen in love, and might not realize it for certain only because he’d never experienced it before.
He still, perhaps, could not have Harry’s degree of certainty; Harry had been in love before and would recognize his own behavior under the influence of such an emotion. But he also didn’t want to make up excuses and categories to shove what he felt into.
He was in love.
And that meant—
That meant he had to show it.
Draco sat up and clapped his hands. A house-elf appeared at once, with a muffled enough sound that Scorpius never stopped snoring.
“Bring me the register of magical creatures bred in Britain in the last year,” Draco commanded in a haughty whisper, and sat back with a satisfied smile as the elf nodded and vanished.
Draco already knew what he was looking for, but it never hurt to confirm his opinion. Besides, he needed to check on prices.
He was indeed going to buy Harry a snowy owl.
But not just any snowy owl. The one he should have had all along, and the one he particularly needed right now.
That’s a sign of love, isn’t it? Draco thought, as he began to flip through the large, leather-bound book the house-elf had handed him a moment later. Giving your lover what he needs, not just what he wants?
*
Harry ducked behind a tree, his heart hammering with excitement, his head spinning, his mood more than a little giddy. He’d been through such extremes of emotion in the last twenty-four hours—was it really only a day ago that his children had been attacked in the kitchen of his own home?—and then got little enough sleep that he probably should have been lying down.
But he didn’t care.
There was no activity from in front of the tree. Carefully, Harry edged his face around the trunk—
And a mudball struck him solidly in the chin.
Flailing, Harry kept his balance with a massive effort. He did flick his wand, and several of the mudballs he’d had piled at his feet leaped around the tree and attacked his opponent, who responded with a pattering flight and many squeals of, “Not fair! Not fair!”
Laughing, Harry wiped the caked substance off his face and watched his godson with a grin. Teddy fled through a massive meadow that had been the Tonks lawn an hour ago and now looked like the remains of a churned battlefield. Mud coated the grass, and rivulets of water, perfect for packing the material into balls, coursed everywhere between high and precarious furrows.
Andromeda had reassured Harry that she and her grandson were both fine, but there was a sadness about her eyes, and a relief when Harry had said he would take Teddy, that made him doubly glad he’d come. Then he hadn’t the heart to refuse Teddy when he suggested flooding the backyard, enchanting the ground to soften, and having a mud-fight.
And not the heart to refuse himself, either, if he told the truth.
Teddy, as an underage wizard with a practice wand, couldn’t give Harry as hard a time as Harry could give him. From the number of mudballs in the air to the number of falls they’d both taken, Harry was leading the way. He never used his full strength, of course, but nothing made Teddy angrier than the impression that an adult wasn’t taking him seriously and holding back to let him win. So Harry had found a middle ground that satisfied them both, and which took off the edge of the manic excitement caused by sudden alterations of mood and too little sleep.
Suddenly Teddy shouted an incantation, muffled by the dirt in his mouth, and two of the balls still chasing him reversed and flung themselves at Harry. Harry aimed his wand and coolly blasted them apart, then pretended not to notice the sudden stirring of a rivulet behind him.
He still yelped when the cold water blasted him and soaked under his robes, though. There was no refusing to respond to that surprise.
Teddy, bent over laughing and laughing, made a tempting target, and for this hour or so, Harry had banished his ability to resist temptation. A simple spell that he often used for making fools of pure-blood or Muggleborn extremists who might incite others to riot, and the ground heaved and twisted and deposited Teddy flat on his face, arse in the air. Harry twirled his wand and grinned, then conjured two small monkeys that leaped on Teddy, hooting, and held him down.
“Do you surrender?” Harry called out.
Teddy tried to respond, but he really did have a mouthful of mud this time and couldn’t make the sounds clearly enough. Harry shook his head sadly. The monkeys jumped up and down on Teddy’s neck and rump and shrieked in excitement.
“That’s not good enough,” Harry said.
Teddy, with an enormous effort, turned his face to the side and shouted, “Yes, I surrender! Get them off me!”
Harry banished the monkeys out of existence—he thought they sounded disappointed when they went—and then pounced on Teddy and hugged him. The wild energy was gone now, leaving behind the good kind of fatigue that Harry usually felt after a full day. He yawned, and sat down, lazily beginning to restore the lawn to some semblance of normality.
He was startled when Teddy hugged him again, hard enough that his wand movements were spoiled and he had grasshoppers instead of grass. Harry corrected that, then returned the fierce embrace and asked, “What was that for?”
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Teddy said into his shoulder. “I don’t want you to die.”
Shaken and touched both at once, Harry bowed his head and slung an arm around his godson’s shoulders. Teddy sat against him, snuggling, though he would have been horrified if anyone called it that, while Harry sent the water back into the pond’s boundaries and dried the mud into harmless dust.
He caught a glimpse of Andromeda watching them from the window. Her own face was weary and set, her eyes full of yearning. Harry supposed she was missing Tonks. She had never got over the loss of her daughter, any more than George had over the loss of his twin.
But they were survivors, all of them. George had lived until he had no choice. Harry was bearing up under his burdens, and had decided it might not be a bad idea to take the time to make himself happy now and again—especially when it was concealed from Ginny under the guise of making someone else happy. Andromeda had committed herself to the task of raising her grandson, when she could have refused and asked Harry to do it. She’d climb past the emotions that afflicted her right now and go on.
He saluted Andromeda with his wand. She nodded at him, and turned away.
*
“But what is it?”
Harry smiled as he let himself into the house. He was in such a good mood after the three hours he’d spent with Teddy that even the excited sound of James’s voice, which usually promised object damage at best and mayhem at worst, couldn’t dampen his spirits. He strode into the drawing room, caught his eldest son up, and enchanted him to hover in the air. James promptly floated towards the walls, from which he could kick off with much glee. It wasn’t flying, but it was, as far as he was concerned, the next best thing.
Ginny greeted him with a strained smile. She had Lily in one arm, and Al hunched on her lap. Harry picked Al up and hugged him, so tightly that his son gave a little muffled exclamation. When Harry looked again, Al was staring at him with brilliant eyes. Harry tried to think how long it had been since he hugged Al like that, for sheer joy, and thought it had been far too long. The panicked embrace of yesterday morning didn’t count.
“I love you, Daddy,” Al whispered, so that only Harry could hear. He had already discovered James made fun of him when he said that.
“I love you, too,” Harry said back, and turned away to finally stare at what seemed to have attracted everyone’s attention. It sat in the middle of the room with a cloth over it, but he could see the cloth swelled out at the top of the thing and then fell in loose waves to the sides. His puzzlement increased. He glanced at Ginny and raised an eyebrow.
“It—was delivered,” she said tightly. “By a Malfoy house-elf.”
Outrage flayed Harry’s throat like bile at the tone she gave the name, but he was holding his child. He was not about to show animosity to Al’s mother by tightening his grip or allowing a grimace to cross his face. He just nodded, ducked a happily flailing James, and then stepped forwards and tugged the cloth off.
“Harry!” Ginny screamed, making Al flinch at the noise and bury his face against Harry’s robes. “There could be any number of hexes—“
“I trust Draco,” Harry said, because letting that pass uncountered was more than he could bear, and faced the shape again.
It was a birdcage. He should have known it would be. And inside sat a snowy owl—but with a hood over its head. Harry blinked, as he wondered for one insane moment if the owl was trained for hawking. Those were the only birds he had heard of that wore hoods.
Letters popped up in front of him, bright cloudy sparks of blue and red, and swam into words.
Dear Harry,
This is a special type of owl called the Guardian Angel, bred to protect and defend one single human. She’ll still deliver post, but she’s also yours—and will make you hers, from what the seller told me. The snowy you owned during the war was probably an earlier type of her, but untrained. Guardian Angels imprint on the first person they see after certain spells are cast and the hood is put on. Make sure that she’s looking at you when you pull it off. I would be extremely upset to find that she’d bonded to your wife or something, No Weasley deserves her. Besides, I spent quite a lot of Galleons on her.
Love,
Draco.
Harry had to close his own eyes when the message was finished. The continuing prejudice towards Ginny’s family, the mention of the cost of the gift, the fact that he had bought an owl who would aid Harry in keeping his promise…all of it was so very Draco.
The “love” is new, though.
Harry licked his lips and turned to put Al gently on the floor. He unlocked the cage door, ignoring Ginny’s shriek of alarm, and swiftly reached in and pulled the hood away even as the owl began to shift.
The large, intense golden eyes locked on him.
Harry gasped as he saw flecks of green rise up like a storm from the bottom of the owl’s eyes, tumble around the black in the center, and then fall back to gleam in the corners of her gaze. Her shifting feet clutched the perch sternly, and she uttered a single, soft, “Hu.”
And then she spread her wings. Harry pulled back quickly, his heart beating so hard that it hurt, cast a Cushioning Charm on his arm, and held it out.
She ignored the invitation and fluttered to his shoulder. Harry winced in anticipation, but her talons didn’t cut him. Perhaps they were soft to the Guardian Angel’s owner, he thought in a daze. The green flecks shone in her eyes as she stared steadily at him, wings still beating to keep her balance. Then she dropped them and put a possessive foot near his throat.
Harry had never felt so much controlled strength near him, intent on a fierce protectiveness. Perhaps his parents had held him like this, once, but of course he was too young to remember it. All the breath left his lungs, and more so when he saw cloudy colored letters forming by magic in front of the owl’s breast feathers.
Did I mention that Guardian Angels are also extremely careful of their charges’ happiness? They’ll protect them against anyone who threatens that happiness—even the owners themselves. Even me.
This is insurance that I can’t harm you any more by leaning on you too much, Harry.
I love you.
Draco.
“Bastard,” Harry whispered, but his throat was tight with joy, and the wound he’d taken when Draco said he wasn’t sure if he loved him and carefully ignored since closed. He raised one hand to touch the Angel’s feathers, and she dipped her head and rubbed her beak against his cheekbone.
“Why did Malfoy give you such a dangerous present?” Ginny asked, fury apparent in her voice. “What if she attacks the children?”
“She’ll do what I tell her to, I think,” Harry said softly. “Won’t you, girl?”
He was startled when she bobbed her head in a nod, but then had to smile. Hedwig had often seemed to respond the same way, though not usually with such human gestures.
“She could hurt—“
“Goddamn it, Ginny, she will not,” Harry snapped, his impatience overflowing. “Draco has a son himself. He wouldn’t endanger a small child. He knows how much my children mean to me.”
“And not how much I mean to you. Obviously.” Ginny turned away with a sob of fury.
“Mummy?” James said uncertainly.
Harry spelled James back to land on the floor, and then turned and picked up Al. Ginny had taken Lily out of the room. For once, he felt no inclination to go after her.
Draco had taken the initiative to show Harry that he didn’t just value him for what Harry could do for him.
Draco had protected Harry against himself.
Draco was in love with him.
No one could take that away, and Harry was not inclined to let Ginny try right now. He wanted to go out in the backyard, and let his owl fly, and spend time with his children. He had almost forgotten what happiness tasted like.
“I want to name the owl, Daddy,” said James, with a large amount of false innocence. “Can I call her Doesn’t Like Al? Because I don’t think she does.”
Harry said firmly, “She likes Al as much as you,” lifted his younger son to rest against him, and then turned and looked at the calm green-golden eyes that never left him, even as she did a little dance on his dipping shoulder. “Besides, I think I’ll be naming the owl.”
The world seemed breathless with joy, and despite the fact that this made things harder, because Draco wouldn’t go free of him to find someone else now and he and Harry still couldn’t have sex and Ginny would probably hate his Guardian Angel, Harry still felt like laughing, because of the one simple fact that gave him the breathlessness.
Draco’s in love with me.
And God, I’m in love with him.
I can’t leave him. I never can.
Chapter 27.
Thank you again for all the reviews! I had a few questions about why Draco would claim he didn’t love Harry or wasn’t sure, which are (hopefully) addressed in this chapter.
As for the angst, it still marches on. Starting with the chapter title, as you can probably see. But it starts getting a bit better towards the end.
Chapter Twenty-Six—Corpse of a Marriage
Harry let the door fall gently shut behind him. He would have to have his conversation with Ginny now—it was already the middle of the morning—although weariness pulled at him like the wings of a lethifold. He could hear her moving quietly about the kitchen. Apparently James and Al were still asleep, or asleep again after breakfast, or perhaps over at Molly’s.
Over at Molly’s, Harry decided, when he stepped into the kitchen and saw it clean of any traces of milk, cereal, orange juice, or pumpkin juice. Not even a Scourgify could make it look this neat when the children had been eating.
Ginny, balancing Lily against her arm as she fed her, started when she saw him. Then her mouth drew tight, and she nodded once. “I’ll put her down in a minute,” she whispered. “She’s almost asleep. Then we can talk.”
Harry nodded absently and sat down at the table, trying to decide if he was hungry. He didn’t think so. The collision with the dragon’s tail seemed to have knocked the hunger out of his stomach along with his ribs out of their proper alignment.
He wondered what Draco would say about that—probably gripe, it was what he did—and then banished the fond smile he could feel forming on his face. Ginny. This was about Ginny now. He would tell her the pure and absolute truth, and let her make the decision about what they should do.
He was startled to feel an odd, cool sensation a moment later, as though his entire left side had been plunged into running water. He glanced down, and felt the scar shiver at the same time as it gave him the cool sensation again. It wasn’t entirely pleasurable, but it wasn’t painful, and it had the effect of scattering his thoughts.
I suppose this is one way to ensure that I focus on my own happiness, too, Harry thought, but he had ignored stranger things. He faced the doorway, even as the tingling from the scar grew more insistent, and waited until Ginny stepped back through, brushing her hands together briskly to remove small bits of baby-debris.
“She’s asleep,” she said, sitting down across from Harry. “And the boys are at the Burrow. What happened?”
“The warning Hermione received was correct,” Harry said simply. “The Masked Lady attacked Hogwarts, with dragons.”
Ginny’s hand twitched, lifted halfway to her face, and then dropped again, as if the shock were too much for such a mundane expression as covering her mouth or eyes. “Did any of the children get hurt?”
Harry shook his head. “The Masked Lady didn’t seem to have expected such opposition, and she fled. But Hermione’s arm was in a sling, and Ron had to have several healing potions.” He hesitated, then added, “And I got torn up by a Hungarian Horntail, and Draco saved my life.”
Ginny’s hands twined tightly together now, apparently for comfort. “I see,” she said. “And how many life-debts is it that you owe each other now?”
“Six altogether,” said Harry. “Three on his part, three on mine. He’s asked for, and received, payments for all of his. There’s still one of mine outstanding.” He met Ginny’s gaze and forged into the most difficult part. “And I discovered that I’m in love with him.”
Ginny’s eyes shut, very gently.
“You wanted to be,” she said.
“I didn’t,” Harry said. Shouting would do no good, he thought. Rational, calm, as reasonable as possible. That was the way to go. But he wouldn’t let her think things that weren’t true. “It makes everything harder. And of course the marriage vows bind me to your side. You’re the only spouse I’ll ever have, Gin. I don’t intend to betray you.”
“No, it just happens anyway,” Ginny muttered, and looked at him again. There was a shine to her eyes that might have been tears. If they were, she was keeping them tightly veiled. “I need—something more than this, Harry,” she said, with a vague gesture of her hand. “Something more than this empty exercise where you continue to make excuses for things you claim you can’t help, and then you go off and do them again.”
Harry let out his breath. This was actually a better reaction than he had anticipated. “You have suggestions?”
“No,” said Ginny, and her mouth had turned into a flat line. “The therapy and the Dreamless Sleep potion were it. What do you propose to do?”
The cold tingling of the scar on his ribs was really quite annoying, Harry thought as he shifted in his seat, only as ignorable as the taste of mint in his mouth. “Not sleep with Draco, obviously,” he said. “Spend more time around you and the children.” The scar tingled again, but Harry refused to say aloud that he was seeking his own happiness. Ginny was likely to snap that he did nothing but, and Harry couldn’t stand to hear that right now. “Help Hermione with the war; that might give me something else to think about besides Draco.” Not likely, with him always haunting your mind. “Continue with the therapy and the use of Dreamless Sleep potion, since you asked. Help you through your grief over George.”
Ginny glanced down, picking at the surface of the table. “I notice that nowhere in your list is ‘sleep with your wife,’” she said.
Harry froze and then swallowed. The tingling of the scar had multiplied, so that now it seemed to have an echo on the right side of his body. But he wasn’t paying attention to it; he wouldn’t begin scratching madly in the middle of a serious discussion with Ginny, which had suddenly turned towards the sour again. “Would you really want me to, in this condition?” he asked.
“What condition?”
“This condition of lusting over and falling in love with someone else.” Harry held her eyes, though it was difficult, especially with the scar buzzing behind his teeth now.
“You think you’re in love,” Ginny said.
“I know I am.”
And Ginny spun to her feet, seized an empty bottle—of Firewhiskey, maybe?—that had stood on the counter, and hurled it against the wall. “I hate this!” she screamed, loudly enough that Harry tensed, expecting a complementary scream from Lily any moment. But no wail followed, only the sound of Ginny’s voice, half-words and half-sobs. “It couldn’t just—our life couldn’t just continue, could it? Or even just continue with a war in it and my brother dying! There always has to be some fucking complication! I hate this—I hate Draco Malfoy—I hate—“ And then she was crying flat out, gripping the table as if it alone could prevent her from sliding to the floor.
Harry stood up and came awkwardly around the table to cradle her in his arms. He wondered if he should, if he had the right to, but if he hadn’t, then he would have endured a tirade about that later.
Ginny clung to him, and shook and shook and shook, her voice the raw, helpless sound of Al’s when he’d been teased and harassed by James all day. Harry stroked her hair and worked to hold her up through sheer strength, since all her muscles seemed to have gone limp. Finally, he picked her up and carried her into the library, where they could sit down on a sofa together.
Through it all, his own helplessness twisted in him like a blade, and the scar buzzed and buzzed and buzzed until the cool tingle of it occupied half his thoughts. Harry almost wished it hurt instead. He was better at ignoring pain than simple peculiarity.
“You’re going,” Ginny whispered, when Harry had spent ten minutes trying to find the right combination of words that would let her know he loved her and stop the crying. Her voice was small and simple and exhausted now. “I’m trying to keep hold of you, to keep our love alive, but you’re going.”
Harry, startled by both her speaking and another surge of shivering from the scar, had a sudden clear thought: Is this really what love feels like? I don’t think it is.
He buried the thought, shoved it behind several impenetrable doors and piled rocks in front of it. No. He was not leaving Ginny behind. He was not doubting her love for him. There were certain things he could not do, not even for Draco.
“I’m not,” he whispered, cradling the back of her head and kissing her brow. The scar buzz sent his lips cutting into his teeth. “I’m sorry. What can I change, Ginny? Tell me what to do.”
“I’m so tired,” Ginny said, voice almost reduced to a slurred murmur against his neck. “I’ve made so many suggestions, and they haven’t worked. You come up with something now.” Her hands curled around his neck, and she clung there, waiting to be comforted.
Like a spoiled child—
Harry buried that thought, too. Was it the scar introducing these strange concepts into his head? He felt growing anger against Draco for demanding this particular life-debt. He just didn’t have time right now to acknowledge it. He would have to, because he had no choice, but he really had no time for it.
“All right,” he said, and closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could, hoping for some sudden inspiration to hit him.
The scar kept cutting through any chains of logic he formed, rattling and shaking his head, and the words your own happiness began repeating in a dull mantra. Harry wondered irritably if one of his own suggestions to right matters should be “killing Draco.”
“I think,” he said at last, “that I may have fulfilled my obligations to the Malfoys as far as the first life-debt goes. I’ve learned the reason that Draco was framed for murder, and while I haven’t captured the people who actually did it, stopping the Masked Lady will stop them.”
Ginny tensed on his lap, but said only, “Malfoy might not agree.”
“Narcissa was the one who claimed the debt, so she’s the one who has the right to say when it’s fulfilled.” Harry shrugged, as much as he could when holding his wife so close. Your own happiness, your own happiness! He might say those words in a minute, and though Ginny probably wouldn’t take them the wrong way, Harry hated the amount of control this one debt appeared to be exercising over him already. “I have an excuse to stay away from them now. Oh, I can’t cut off contact with them altogether,” he added, as Ginny’s face suddenly shone. “Another life-debt payment was a friendship with Draco. But there’s no reason for me to spend every morning over there doing research, when we’ve learned—“
His tongue escaped him for a moment, and tangled behind his teeth. Harry coughed to cover it, and fought grimly against the sudden conviction of what he had to do.
The debt wants me to make a promise that will assure my happiness. Bastard! Harry wasn’t sure if he meant Draco with the word, or the particular debt the scar represented, or life in general.
“Yes?” Ginny prompted him.
“We’ve learned what we needed to learn about this thing creating the fading and the visions in mirrors and the dreams between us,” said Harry in determination, though his mouth tried to twist away from him and say, I want to just spend time with Al and Teddy, because that will make me happiest right now, and I want to spend a morning thinking about Draco and nothing else.
“Between you?” Ginny’s voice was shrill. “You—you told me that you were the only one who had the dreams!”
Harry grimaced. If he hadn’t been fighting a losing battle with the debt, he would have known better than to say that. “The dreams have changed,” he said. “Not all of them are about sex, but Draco’s having them too.”
“The exact same dreams?”
Harry nodded.
Ginny’s head fell limply against Harry’s chest, as if all the hope had been drained away. “Please take Dreamless Sleep as long as you can,” she mumbled. “Harry, please. I don’t ask for much, you know that.”
You do, Harry wanted to say, but that was the debt’s fault; he was more aware of the cool pulsing along his ribs now than he was of the warmth and weight of his wife in his arms. And any moment now, he would say something that would deeply sour relations between them. Already, the impulse to say No to her request was trying to take him over.
Goddamnit.
In silence, Harry made the promise to himself to spend time with Teddy today, doing nothing but play games or go to Diagon Alley or whatever else his godson wanted to do. He would do it regardless of what else happened, regardless of what Ginny or Draco or George’s ghost demanded from him.
The cool tingle retreated to what was almost a pleasant sensation. Harry blinked, and then shook his head, but when Ginny wanted to know if that meant he was refusing her, he murmured, “Of course not, love. I’ll take the Dreamless Sleep tonight and as many other nights as it’s safe. What else would you like?”
Ginny suddenly took a deep breath, and said, “You’ll do it.”
“Yes.” Perhaps Harry simply had a clearer perspective now that the scar was no longer trying to inundate his brain, but he thought it was odd she had given in with so little fuss. He frowned. “Love, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll—I just wanted—“ Ginny shivered a few times, and then absently caressed his arm. “I just wanted to know that you would,” she whispered.
Harry blinked, but he was all too glad to think they had avoided several deeper problems with such a simple solution—that Ginny had not started blaming him for falling in love with Draco, for example, or that he would have been required to have an argument about staying away from Malfoy Manor altogether. He proceeded to spend some time stroking her hair, before he stood and prepared to visit Andromeda and Teddy. He could check on their health and keep his promise to himself at the same time.
Ginny let him go with little more than a deep kiss and a sigh of relief. Her hand did tighten in his hair, but overall she seemed to trust to his willingness to keep his promises.
I do that, Harry thought as he Apparated. Even the ones that somebody had no right to ask of me in payment for a life-debt.
*
It was occurring to Draco that he might, after all, be in love.
He sat in the nursery, next to Scorpius’s bed—his son had fallen asleep after a round of play intense enough to leave Draco staggering—and held his arm over his eyes. Not that the ceiling was so ornamented as to provide a grand distraction, but he thought it better to give himself no escape from his thoughts.
He had assumed that of course he wasn’t in love with Harry, or else that he didn’t know, because he hadn’t felt the single grand, overwhelming realization that Harry had.
But since he’d never loved someone romantically, how would he know?
He had, of course, never loved Marian. Lust and a basic politeness, when they could still get along, did well enough. And his lovers were about physical expression of the needs Marian couldn’t meet, and sometimes about annoying her or chasing the forbidden. There had never been place or room in Draco’s life for overwhelming.
So perhaps he wouldn’t recognize it when it came to him? Or perhaps he felt it differently than Harry did, and judging his own emotions by the same standards naturally wouldn’t work?
Experimentally, he tried to picture Harry separating from his wife and cutting off contact with him—not taking another lover, so Draco had nothing to be physically jealous about, but also refusing to spend time with him, not being there to joke with, not being in arm’s reach when Draco wanted to share the wonder that was his son or his own survival, not encouraging Draco to reach for his potential…
A snarl escaped Draco’s teeth, and he opened his eyes in startlement as his hands clenched down on the arms of the chair and splinters drove into the palms. Carefully, he released the hold and then glanced over at Scorpius. He was asleep, his lips parted, a soft baby bubble of spit and air having escaped them to gleam on his cheek. Draco’s heart contracted painfully.
And it went on contracting when he thought of Harry parting from him. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He needed Harry in his life, whether they ever became more intimate than the kiss Harry had given him last night and the brush of skin to scar. This was a requirement, not a luxury. He would have given up the chance to see anyone in the world save his mother and his son in order to see Harry.
He remembered the life-debt promise that Harry would continue in friendship with Draco. He seized on it with a greed that startled him. There was at least that, no matter what else tried to part them.
But couldn’t we still be friends—
Not unless a friend was someone he trusted to lay his heart open and go through it with a dozen small knives. Not unless he would have handed his wand over to a friend without a second thought. Not unless he could watch a friend toss Scorpius in the air and not be alarmed.
His relationships with Blaise and Millicent had never been like that, or with Pansy, not back in the very headiest and closest days of Slytherin House. If his experience with Harry was simple friendship, then Draco had never known simple friendship before.
And the other close ties in his life—to Lucius and to Snape—shared nothing in common with his tie to Harry, either. And whatever he felt, it was the very opposite of his fear around Bellatrix and the Dark Lord.
Draco shivered. It was a strange and peculiar thing, to know the isolated Draco Malfoy might have fallen in love, and might not realize it for certain only because he’d never experienced it before.
He still, perhaps, could not have Harry’s degree of certainty; Harry had been in love before and would recognize his own behavior under the influence of such an emotion. But he also didn’t want to make up excuses and categories to shove what he felt into.
He was in love.
And that meant—
That meant he had to show it.
Draco sat up and clapped his hands. A house-elf appeared at once, with a muffled enough sound that Scorpius never stopped snoring.
“Bring me the register of magical creatures bred in Britain in the last year,” Draco commanded in a haughty whisper, and sat back with a satisfied smile as the elf nodded and vanished.
Draco already knew what he was looking for, but it never hurt to confirm his opinion. Besides, he needed to check on prices.
He was indeed going to buy Harry a snowy owl.
But not just any snowy owl. The one he should have had all along, and the one he particularly needed right now.
That’s a sign of love, isn’t it? Draco thought, as he began to flip through the large, leather-bound book the house-elf had handed him a moment later. Giving your lover what he needs, not just what he wants?
*
Harry ducked behind a tree, his heart hammering with excitement, his head spinning, his mood more than a little giddy. He’d been through such extremes of emotion in the last twenty-four hours—was it really only a day ago that his children had been attacked in the kitchen of his own home?—and then got little enough sleep that he probably should have been lying down.
But he didn’t care.
There was no activity from in front of the tree. Carefully, Harry edged his face around the trunk—
And a mudball struck him solidly in the chin.
Flailing, Harry kept his balance with a massive effort. He did flick his wand, and several of the mudballs he’d had piled at his feet leaped around the tree and attacked his opponent, who responded with a pattering flight and many squeals of, “Not fair! Not fair!”
Laughing, Harry wiped the caked substance off his face and watched his godson with a grin. Teddy fled through a massive meadow that had been the Tonks lawn an hour ago and now looked like the remains of a churned battlefield. Mud coated the grass, and rivulets of water, perfect for packing the material into balls, coursed everywhere between high and precarious furrows.
Andromeda had reassured Harry that she and her grandson were both fine, but there was a sadness about her eyes, and a relief when Harry had said he would take Teddy, that made him doubly glad he’d come. Then he hadn’t the heart to refuse Teddy when he suggested flooding the backyard, enchanting the ground to soften, and having a mud-fight.
And not the heart to refuse himself, either, if he told the truth.
Teddy, as an underage wizard with a practice wand, couldn’t give Harry as hard a time as Harry could give him. From the number of mudballs in the air to the number of falls they’d both taken, Harry was leading the way. He never used his full strength, of course, but nothing made Teddy angrier than the impression that an adult wasn’t taking him seriously and holding back to let him win. So Harry had found a middle ground that satisfied them both, and which took off the edge of the manic excitement caused by sudden alterations of mood and too little sleep.
Suddenly Teddy shouted an incantation, muffled by the dirt in his mouth, and two of the balls still chasing him reversed and flung themselves at Harry. Harry aimed his wand and coolly blasted them apart, then pretended not to notice the sudden stirring of a rivulet behind him.
He still yelped when the cold water blasted him and soaked under his robes, though. There was no refusing to respond to that surprise.
Teddy, bent over laughing and laughing, made a tempting target, and for this hour or so, Harry had banished his ability to resist temptation. A simple spell that he often used for making fools of pure-blood or Muggleborn extremists who might incite others to riot, and the ground heaved and twisted and deposited Teddy flat on his face, arse in the air. Harry twirled his wand and grinned, then conjured two small monkeys that leaped on Teddy, hooting, and held him down.
“Do you surrender?” Harry called out.
Teddy tried to respond, but he really did have a mouthful of mud this time and couldn’t make the sounds clearly enough. Harry shook his head sadly. The monkeys jumped up and down on Teddy’s neck and rump and shrieked in excitement.
“That’s not good enough,” Harry said.
Teddy, with an enormous effort, turned his face to the side and shouted, “Yes, I surrender! Get them off me!”
Harry banished the monkeys out of existence—he thought they sounded disappointed when they went—and then pounced on Teddy and hugged him. The wild energy was gone now, leaving behind the good kind of fatigue that Harry usually felt after a full day. He yawned, and sat down, lazily beginning to restore the lawn to some semblance of normality.
He was startled when Teddy hugged him again, hard enough that his wand movements were spoiled and he had grasshoppers instead of grass. Harry corrected that, then returned the fierce embrace and asked, “What was that for?”
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Teddy said into his shoulder. “I don’t want you to die.”
Shaken and touched both at once, Harry bowed his head and slung an arm around his godson’s shoulders. Teddy sat against him, snuggling, though he would have been horrified if anyone called it that, while Harry sent the water back into the pond’s boundaries and dried the mud into harmless dust.
He caught a glimpse of Andromeda watching them from the window. Her own face was weary and set, her eyes full of yearning. Harry supposed she was missing Tonks. She had never got over the loss of her daughter, any more than George had over the loss of his twin.
But they were survivors, all of them. George had lived until he had no choice. Harry was bearing up under his burdens, and had decided it might not be a bad idea to take the time to make himself happy now and again—especially when it was concealed from Ginny under the guise of making someone else happy. Andromeda had committed herself to the task of raising her grandson, when she could have refused and asked Harry to do it. She’d climb past the emotions that afflicted her right now and go on.
He saluted Andromeda with his wand. She nodded at him, and turned away.
*
“But what is it?”
Harry smiled as he let himself into the house. He was in such a good mood after the three hours he’d spent with Teddy that even the excited sound of James’s voice, which usually promised object damage at best and mayhem at worst, couldn’t dampen his spirits. He strode into the drawing room, caught his eldest son up, and enchanted him to hover in the air. James promptly floated towards the walls, from which he could kick off with much glee. It wasn’t flying, but it was, as far as he was concerned, the next best thing.
Ginny greeted him with a strained smile. She had Lily in one arm, and Al hunched on her lap. Harry picked Al up and hugged him, so tightly that his son gave a little muffled exclamation. When Harry looked again, Al was staring at him with brilliant eyes. Harry tried to think how long it had been since he hugged Al like that, for sheer joy, and thought it had been far too long. The panicked embrace of yesterday morning didn’t count.
“I love you, Daddy,” Al whispered, so that only Harry could hear. He had already discovered James made fun of him when he said that.
“I love you, too,” Harry said back, and turned away to finally stare at what seemed to have attracted everyone’s attention. It sat in the middle of the room with a cloth over it, but he could see the cloth swelled out at the top of the thing and then fell in loose waves to the sides. His puzzlement increased. He glanced at Ginny and raised an eyebrow.
“It—was delivered,” she said tightly. “By a Malfoy house-elf.”
Outrage flayed Harry’s throat like bile at the tone she gave the name, but he was holding his child. He was not about to show animosity to Al’s mother by tightening his grip or allowing a grimace to cross his face. He just nodded, ducked a happily flailing James, and then stepped forwards and tugged the cloth off.
“Harry!” Ginny screamed, making Al flinch at the noise and bury his face against Harry’s robes. “There could be any number of hexes—“
“I trust Draco,” Harry said, because letting that pass uncountered was more than he could bear, and faced the shape again.
It was a birdcage. He should have known it would be. And inside sat a snowy owl—but with a hood over its head. Harry blinked, as he wondered for one insane moment if the owl was trained for hawking. Those were the only birds he had heard of that wore hoods.
Letters popped up in front of him, bright cloudy sparks of blue and red, and swam into words.
Dear Harry,
This is a special type of owl called the Guardian Angel, bred to protect and defend one single human. She’ll still deliver post, but she’s also yours—and will make you hers, from what the seller told me. The snowy you owned during the war was probably an earlier type of her, but untrained. Guardian Angels imprint on the first person they see after certain spells are cast and the hood is put on. Make sure that she’s looking at you when you pull it off. I would be extremely upset to find that she’d bonded to your wife or something, No Weasley deserves her. Besides, I spent quite a lot of Galleons on her.
Love,
Draco.
Harry had to close his own eyes when the message was finished. The continuing prejudice towards Ginny’s family, the mention of the cost of the gift, the fact that he had bought an owl who would aid Harry in keeping his promise…all of it was so very Draco.
The “love” is new, though.
Harry licked his lips and turned to put Al gently on the floor. He unlocked the cage door, ignoring Ginny’s shriek of alarm, and swiftly reached in and pulled the hood away even as the owl began to shift.
The large, intense golden eyes locked on him.
Harry gasped as he saw flecks of green rise up like a storm from the bottom of the owl’s eyes, tumble around the black in the center, and then fall back to gleam in the corners of her gaze. Her shifting feet clutched the perch sternly, and she uttered a single, soft, “Hu.”
And then she spread her wings. Harry pulled back quickly, his heart beating so hard that it hurt, cast a Cushioning Charm on his arm, and held it out.
She ignored the invitation and fluttered to his shoulder. Harry winced in anticipation, but her talons didn’t cut him. Perhaps they were soft to the Guardian Angel’s owner, he thought in a daze. The green flecks shone in her eyes as she stared steadily at him, wings still beating to keep her balance. Then she dropped them and put a possessive foot near his throat.
Harry had never felt so much controlled strength near him, intent on a fierce protectiveness. Perhaps his parents had held him like this, once, but of course he was too young to remember it. All the breath left his lungs, and more so when he saw cloudy colored letters forming by magic in front of the owl’s breast feathers.
Did I mention that Guardian Angels are also extremely careful of their charges’ happiness? They’ll protect them against anyone who threatens that happiness—even the owners themselves. Even me.
This is insurance that I can’t harm you any more by leaning on you too much, Harry.
I love you.
Draco.
“Bastard,” Harry whispered, but his throat was tight with joy, and the wound he’d taken when Draco said he wasn’t sure if he loved him and carefully ignored since closed. He raised one hand to touch the Angel’s feathers, and she dipped her head and rubbed her beak against his cheekbone.
“Why did Malfoy give you such a dangerous present?” Ginny asked, fury apparent in her voice. “What if she attacks the children?”
“She’ll do what I tell her to, I think,” Harry said softly. “Won’t you, girl?”
He was startled when she bobbed her head in a nod, but then had to smile. Hedwig had often seemed to respond the same way, though not usually with such human gestures.
“She could hurt—“
“Goddamn it, Ginny, she will not,” Harry snapped, his impatience overflowing. “Draco has a son himself. He wouldn’t endanger a small child. He knows how much my children mean to me.”
“And not how much I mean to you. Obviously.” Ginny turned away with a sob of fury.
“Mummy?” James said uncertainly.
Harry spelled James back to land on the floor, and then turned and picked up Al. Ginny had taken Lily out of the room. For once, he felt no inclination to go after her.
Draco had taken the initiative to show Harry that he didn’t just value him for what Harry could do for him.
Draco had protected Harry against himself.
Draco was in love with him.
No one could take that away, and Harry was not inclined to let Ginny try right now. He wanted to go out in the backyard, and let his owl fly, and spend time with his children. He had almost forgotten what happiness tasted like.
“I want to name the owl, Daddy,” said James, with a large amount of false innocence. “Can I call her Doesn’t Like Al? Because I don’t think she does.”
Harry said firmly, “She likes Al as much as you,” lifted his younger son to rest against him, and then turned and looked at the calm green-golden eyes that never left him, even as she did a little dance on his dipping shoulder. “Besides, I think I’ll be naming the owl.”
The world seemed breathless with joy, and despite the fact that this made things harder, because Draco wouldn’t go free of him to find someone else now and he and Harry still couldn’t have sex and Ginny would probably hate his Guardian Angel, Harry still felt like laughing, because of the one simple fact that gave him the breathlessness.
Draco’s in love with me.
And God, I’m in love with him.
I can’t leave him. I never can.
Chapter 27.